Foxit Vs PDFelement: Side-by-Side Comparison (2025)

In this Foxit vs PdfElement comparison, I will show you the key differences between these two PDF editors. I will compare PDFelement to Foxit based on features, pricing, my experience, user interfaces, and pros and cons. I spent numerous hours with both PDF editors, and I am here to share the benefits and limitations of each tool to ensure you make the right choice.

These are the key points that I explored during the Foxit vs PDFelement clash:

• Both Foxit and PDFelement are among my top 5 PDF editors.
• PDFelement is a more affordable PDF editor than Foxit.
• Foxit has more advanced features, and its drag-and-drop functions worked better for me.
• I preferred better PDFelement’s AI features.

Now, let’s dive into the side-by-side comparison of Foxit vs PDFelement!

Key differences between Foxit and PDFelement

Here is a short overview of the key differences I found in the Foxit vs PDFelement showdown:

	Foxit	PDFelement
Features	PDF editing and reading, Image drag and drop, Annotating PDFs, Organizing PDFs, Form filling and signatures, Scan and converting PDFs	PDF editing and reading, Annotating PDFs, Organizing PDFs, Form filling and signatures, Converting PDF files
In-built AI tools	Fair	Extensive
User interface	Intuitive user interface	User-friendly interface
Pricing	Free version: Available PDF Editor: $129.99/year/user PDF Editor+: $172.79/year/user AI Assistant: $49.99/year/user	Free version: Available Perpetual license: One-time payment of $129.99 Yearly plan: $79.99/year/user 2-year plan: $109.99/year/user
Free trial	Yes	Yes
Cross-platform availability	Windows, Mac, iOS, Android and Online	Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and Online
Offline mode	Yes	Yes
G2 ratings	4.6	4.5

Comparison: Foxit vs PDFelement

First, I will show you both PDF readers’ features one by one. Second, I will guide you through my experience with them and their pricing. Lastly, I will show you the pros and cons of Foxit and PDFelement and reveal my pick.

Key features

Let’s start the PDFelement vs Foxit clash with their key features!

Foxit’s features

PDF editor

Foxit uses a drag-and-drop system when editing text in your PDF files. To access this feature, just go to the edit tab and select the edit text. When selecting a text box, you can move it around and insert text.

Besides editing existing text, you can add new text to your PDF. Hit the edit button, go to the edit content, and finally, click on the add text tool. This way, you can easily add rich text and move it to your pages by dragging and dropping it.

Also, Foxit PDF editor allows you to use a different font type for the text, adjust the size, and change the margins of a content block and paragraph alignment and spacing. You will see these options on the right side of the PDF editor when editing text.

Apart from text editing, you can insert pictures into PDF documents using Foxit. When inserting a picture, it also follows a drag-and-drop system.

After you insert the picture into the PDF file but want to move it somewhere else, you only need to click on the edited picture, and you can place it somewhere else smoothly.

PDF reader

Foxit has PDF reader tools as well. If you click on the view tab, you will have access to some valuable features to read your PDFs.

You can use the read mode, change to night view if you want, and change between numerous view options. Ultimately, Foxit has all the tools you need for convenient PDF viewing.

Annotate PDF documents

Annotating documents is crucial. It helps to review PDF documents faster and more efficiently, especially if you work as a part of a team.

Foxit PDF editor has some useful features for commenting, reviewing, and highlighting text. If you click on the Comment tab on the top toolbar, you will quickly see all the features to annotate PDF documents.

You can choose from numerous options when it comes to highlighting text, adding callouts, or notes. Whenever you add one of these items, you can customize them further using the window coming up on the right.

PDF organizer

If you hit the Organize button on the top tools, you will see all the options to organize your PDFs. It has a page panel that allows you to organize pages by dragging and dropping their thumbnails.

Also, you can delete, insert pages, swap, flatten, crop, extract, and split them if you want. It offers a feature to compare documents, where Foxit highlights the parts where the two documents differ from each other.

Forms and signatures

If you want to create forms, Foxit is a good option. It has some useful and easy-to-use tools to create or fill forms within a PDF document. You can add text, drop-down lists, checkboxes, and buttons, so you can generate forms super easily.

If you need to sign your PDF documents, that is not a problem with Foxit PDF editor. You can create your own signature utilizing the Foxit eSign tool. After you generate your signature, you can smoothly add it with a few clicks anytime you need it.

Converting and Scan to PDF

First, Foxit allows you to convert PDFs into different formats, such as Microsoft Office formats or images. However, Foxit has the option to convert paper documents to electronic PDF files.

The best part is that Foxit utilizes OCR to convert scanned documents or images into editable text. I had a positive experience with the OCR and the whole process of converting documents into PDF files.

PDF protection

PDF protection is an essential tool you need for your documents. If you click on the project, you can easily add passwords to your PDFs and restrict access. Just a side note here: there is no way to recover the password from the PDF if you forgot it. So, make sure you save it somewhere else as well.

When restricting access to PDF files, you can choose from multiple options. You can only allow them to print or make changes, but if you want, you can just allow them to copy text.

AI assistant

Foxit has an AI assistant feature to increase productivity and effectively pull out information from your PDFs. The summary feature is especially useful for quickly understanding your PDF.

Nevertheless, you can ask questions about the PDFs, and it really works like an in-built ChatGPT to your PDF files.

PDFelement’s features

Let’s see if PDFelement has better tools!

PDF Editing

On the home page, you can quickly access some tools to edit your PDF, add text, crop or translate your page, or use the optical character recognition (OCR) tool. To use all the PDF editing features, click on edit in the top toolbar, and you will find all the tools you need here.

Using this function, you can add, delete, move, and resize all the elements of the page. PDFelement supports drag-and-drop, so you can move text boxes, pictures, and forms all around your pages.

Whenever you want to make a change or add new text, you can further customize the parameters on the right sidebar. You can change the fonts, sizes, colors, spacing, and more.

With PDFelement Pro, you can add and edit pictures as well. Just go to the image tab on the top toolbar, and you can add or drag and drop a picture.

Once it is on your page, you can move, resize, and perform different actions, such as rotating.

Ultimately, I discovered during my Wondershare PDFelement review that you can edit PDFs easily, and the tools are quite intuitive.

PDF reader

PDFelement also has great PDF reading features, which are included in the free trial version. It provides different views like a single-page, 2-page, 4-page spread, and split views.

You can choose from dark and light modes, which makes it easier to read PDF documents and protect your eyes. It is especially useful if you work on PDF files a lot.

Annotate PDFs

If you hit on the comment, you can access all the relevant annotation tools to easily review documents. You can leave comments, highlight text, or add stamps where others can sign the documents.

It’s also great that PDFelement offers numerous options to customize these annotations further. For example, you can choose from multiple colors when adding a note. Although this is not a monumental feature, I like that they also pay close attention to these small things.

Forms and signing tools

With PDFelement, you create fillable forms. When I tested the PDF forms, I found one really practical thing. This is the “Calculate Order” function.

Using this PDF tool, you can give the sum of the other two fields, so it essentially works like a very simple Excel. I also noticed that the PDF forms’ tools are straightforward and intuitive.

As mentioned, you can sign PDFs using PDFelement. You can create your digital signature with a few clicks and smoothly sign documents.

Organize PDFs

Furthermore, it is super easy to reorganize your PDF pages. Click on the Organize tab at the top, and you can delete, insert, and change the order of the pages.

There are also other options like rotating, sizing, and cropping your PDF so you can make the pages look exactly like they fit you.

PDF Protection

Security is crucial when deciding between PDF editors. And during my Wondershare PDFelement review, it passed the test.

Using PDFelement, you can give an open password and a permission password to your PDF files.

If choosing the open passwords, you have to choose a password that must be entered each time you enter a PDF file. On the other hand, you can set a permission password to allow others to edit and print the PDFs.

Converting PDFs into other formats

PDFelement can convert PDFs into many different formats. Just click the “Convert, select a format you want to convert your PDF file, and that is it.

It supports many file formats, including Word documents, Excel, images, and Epub.

AI tools

Lastly, I tested the AI tools during my Wondershare PDFelement review. Using the AI assistant feature, can ask questions about a PDF file, request a summary, and more.

Essentially, it helps you manage your PDFs with high efficiency and create content for your PDFs. I did not have to wait too long for the output, which is also a good point. Moreover, I experienced high accuracy when the AI assistant provided me with the answers.

Compared to other PDF editors on the market, PDFelement has solid PDF tools.

My experience

Now, let’s see my experience with both PDF apps!

My experience with Foxit PDF editor

Foxit has an intuitive user interface, and I found its tools easy to use. It is ideal for both work and personal use.

Essentially, it has similar features to Nitro or Adobe Acrobat, but Foxit is significantly cheaper. Another difference I noticed is that Foxit is a fast PDF reader. Even when I opened up larger PDF files, I did not have an issue with the loading time.

Overall, I had a very positive experience with Foxit.

My experience with PDFelement

PDFelement is an easy-to-use PDF editor overall. Many times, I worked with longer PDF files in parallel, but I did not experience any performance issues, which is quite common with many PDF editors.

It is also great that they launch new features regularly, so they keep up with the latest changes in the PDF and software space.

PDFelement has a user-friendly interface where you can easily find and use all the tools you need. Besides navigating smoothly among its PDF tools, I also appreciated the PDF reading functionality.

It is great that you can choose from different themes and use many view options depending on what PDF document you read.

Ultimately, I had a good experience with PDFelement; it offered great value when managing my PDF files.

Pricing

Let’s check their pricing!

Foxit’s pricing

Foxit offers two plans. The PDF editor includes the essential features to edit PDF files for $129.99. By choosing this plan, you can create documents, edit them, fill out forms, add security, and more.

Essentially, you can have many advanced features with this plan; the real limitations of this plan are the limited AI credits and signing tools.

Nevertheless, if you need the eSign, smart redact features, and want to use Foxit on your mobile, you must go with the PDF Editor+. You can get this plan for $172.79 per year and access all the advanced features of Foxit.

Lastly, if you want to add AI Assistant, which includes 2000 credits per month, that is an extra $49.99/year.

PDFelement’s pricing

PDFelement pricing for individuals looks like this:

You can get the yearly plan for $79.99 per user for a single platform. A cross-platform individual plan is $89.99 per user yearly, and you can use PDFelement on various platforms.

The yearly plan, regardless of whether you buy it for a single or cross-platform, includes no watermark, 1-year access to all features, 1-year of PDFelement updates, and Free 20GB PDFelement Cloud storage. These plans also cover free customer support.

In addition to the yearly plan, you can purchase a 2-year plan for $109.99 for a single platform and for $119.99 for cross-platform. With the 2-year plan, you can get the latest version of PDFelement for 2 years, 2-year access to all features, and 100GB PDFelement Cloud storage.

You can also buy the perpetual license, which costs a one-time fee of $129.99. With the perpetual license, you get access to all features, as well as 20GB of PDFelement Cloud storage. However, if there are updates in the future for the next versions, you need to pay to get all the new features.

For businesses, PDFelement offers the following plans:

The annual plan for one user is $109.9, while the lifetime license is $139. If you want to purchase PDFelement for more than 10 users, I recommend reaching out to them, as they may give you volume discounts.

Based on a common practice in the PDF editor space, if you want to use the AI tools without limits, you need to buy it for $3.99 / month. There are also discounts for students.

Overall, PDFelement is among the cheaper PDF editors. Just to give you an example, Adobe Acrobat’s yearly plan is $239, while Nitro offers its Pro plan for €199.78. As you can see, they are significantly more expensive than PDFelement.

Foxit’s pros and cons

It is time to summarize the pros and cons of the Foxit vs PDFelement battle. Let’s begin with Foxit!

Foxit’s pros

Foxit is an easy-to-use app that is easy to navigate.

Secondly, it has advanced PDF editing features. Using this PDF editor tool, you will be covered for your daily work.

The drag-and-drop functions when inserting text or images are very smooth.

Foxit has fantastic OCR features as well, and it worked great for me.

Foxit’s cons

These days, you need to sign documents digitally every day, so I think such a feature should be part of the essential plan.

PDFelement’s pros and cons

After my PDFelement review, I found these pros and cons you should know about this PDF editor.

PDFelement’s pros

PDFelement is a super easy PDF editor. Using it, you can edit and create PDFs quickly and smoothly.

Also, PDFelement is cheap. The $79.99 is a reasonable price for the value it offers, and it provides multi-platform support as well.

In addition, the PDF reading tools are outstanding. You can choose from different view options and two themes.

PDF document editing is very simple, and you can choose from numerous formatting options.

PDFelement’s cons

I did not find any issues with the PDF editor or its functionality. Nevertheless, I identified one issue during my Wondershare PDFelement review based on user reports.

Some users reported that after they buy a lifetime license, there are pop-ups after some months to upgrade their plan. While I did not experience this problem, it may be worth noting.

There were also reports regarding the fact that AI tools are not included in the paid plans, and you need to pay if you upgrade your lifetime license. Nevertheless, these are the same with almost all the PDF editors on the market, so I did not want to flag this out.

Related articles:

• My Honest Foxit Review After Trying +30 PDF Editors (2025)
• I Tested +30 PDF editors for Windows | Here Are The 8 Best
• Adobe Acrobat Vs PDFelement: Which One Is Better In 2025?
• Adobe Acrobat Vs Foxit: I Tried Both and Found The BEST (2025)
• The 7 Best Adobe Acrobat Alternatives: 30+ PDF Editors Tested

My recommendation: Foxit vs PDFelement

Both Foxit PDF editor and PDFelement are among my top picks when it comes to choosing the best PDF editors. In terms of pricing, PDFelement is a more affordable solution.

Also, I think both PDF editors have an intuitive interface and rich features. If I need to choose between times, I would probably go with Foxit, thanks to its smooth drag-and-drop features.

Frequently asked questions

What is better than Foxit?

For individuals, I think UPDF is an ideal Foxit alternative. It is an AI-powered PDF editor with affordable pricing and powerful features.

You can find the full review here about UPDF: UPDF Review: Is It The Best PDF Editor In 2025? (REAL Experience)

For businesses, Nitro PDF Editor could be a good alternative to Foxit. It has a solid feature set, but it comes with a more premium price.

To read more about Nitro, you can check the full review here: Nitro PDF Pro Review: My findings after testing +30 PDF editors

Is Foxit no longer free?

Foxit has a free plan. However, it only includes the basic features. That said, you can read PDF documents, but does not allow you to edit PDFs.

Can I use PDFelement for free?

Similarly to Foxit PDF editor, PDFelement has a free plan with a limited feature set. So, you can only edit PDFs when using a paid plan.

Disclosure: I only recommend products I would use myself, and all opinions expressed here are our own. This post may contain affiliate links that, at no additional cost to you, may earn a small commission. Read the full privacy policy here.